A Shift to Purple

2014 January 3

by Rob Meltzer

Florida is about to Pass New York as the third largest state in the United States, meaning that Texas, California and Florida will be the big three. Not one of the original thirteen colonies in the bunch, and nary a state that felt a true impact from the American Revolution, the War of 1812 or the American Civil War. The news is tempered with other interesting data. The only reason why New York is treading water is because of an inflow of immigrants into New York which offsets losses upstate. Immigrants coming in tend to be more conservative. Democrats cut loose from their mooring in colder climates and resettled in warmer climates also loosen their connections to traditional political party affiliations. Many of the reddest parts of Texas and California are made up of former northeners, who tend to look at political candidates as locals and neighbors rather than the party of grandma and grandpa when Tammany helped them get established. Equally, Florida is seeing growth in its conservative sectors. The upshot is that Northern migrants become more politically independent, and more likely to be swayed by their neighbors. Meaning that not only is Florida becoming more deeply purple as its population grows, but New York is becoming more purple as its population fades. No one knows where the trend is heading, but this does bode poorly for Northern Democrats and Northern Republicans who think that a New York or New Jersey candidate any longer has sway in the country as a whole. Let’s face it–New England, New York and New Jersey are rushing headlong into political and cultural irrelevance, and we’ll either suck it up or have to consider taking our original beloved 13 states and going our own way.

Other than the population data, Rob has this one almost exactly wrong. California is more strongly Democratic than probably ever. Florida is more Democratic than it’s been since Nixon – Obama won 50 percent of the Cuban-American vote. Texas is becoming purpler, with help from that bonehead Rick Perry. Immigrants have come to hate Republicans even more than Republicans hate immigrants. New York City – flooded by conservative immigrants, Rob says – just elected a socialist mayor.

As I wrote in a column a few weeks ago:

The list of states moving from red to purple to blue is long – New Hampshire, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, for starters. Only a few states are going the other way: Arkansas, West Virginia and maybe Louisiana.

Actually, you have this exactly backward. My data is coming from my friends inside the San Francisco democratic party who are a little worried. In places like Stockton, the folks who were foreclosed on tended to be Democrats, and the folks who bought those houses out of foreclosure tend to be conservative, and they are winning local elections, which is where the power grows from in California, and in Florida. We’re not going to know the full fall out of all this until the next census and redistricting, but the warning bells are coming from the Democrats. Rick, sometimes you really are a prisoner of wishful thinking. I remember the abuse when I assured you that Brown was going to beat Coakley and you told me I had it totally wrong. My matrix was correct then as well.

Conversations aren’t “data.” My views aren’t shaped by conversations with friends. They are based on election results and polls. You do know how to look those up, right? You’re aware that the last time Californians voted – just 14 months ago – they elected Democrats to every statewide office and gave them a veto-proof majority in both houses of the state legislature, right? And that New York City had an election just two months ago, electing the most liberal Democrat in the field? Do your New York friends think a sea change in public opinion happened just last week?

As the descendant of generations of native Floridians dating back to the late 1700s, many of whom left diaries, I assure you the wars mentioned had profound effects on those living there at the time, and the Civil War continued to affect northern Florida’s culture for more than 100 years.
I grasp the premise of your post has little to do with Florida’s history, but I can also assure you conservative principles are not some snowbird new arrival there.

Thanks, Lee. You’re not dense. The rule is not to engage with folks who have no desire to converse.
I was an idiot to react to MeltzerBait. Maybe I can attribute it to falling on ice and hitting my head pretty badly yesterday.
It won’t happen again.

Dana Milbank and Charles Blow both have recent columns noting that in the last few years, the Republican Party has been becoming even more conservative on cultural issues. Both note the recent Pew poll, that found the parties pulling further apart on the question of evolution. For the first time, more than half of self-identified Republicans agreed with the statement that “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”

Says Milbank: “The Republican Party is achieving the seemingly impossible feat of becoming even more theological. Democrats and independents haven’t moved much in their views, while Republicans took a sharp turn toward fundamentalism. “The increasing gap isn’t surprising,” says Alan Cooperman, my former Post colleague who is now director of religion research at Pew. “What’s surprising is it’s the Republicans shifting, not the Democrats.”

“As a matter of political Darwinism, the Republicans’ mutation is not likely to help the GOP’s survival. As the country overall becomes more racially diverse and more secular, Republicans are resolutely white and increasingly devout.”

The irony is that as the Repus move toward evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christianity (let’s face it, it isn’t Islam or Buddhism) they seem to be moving away from the “Christian” virtues of charity and non-agression and love for enemies.

The other issue is the power of what we’ve been talking about in another thread: ike-minded thinking, especially religious fervor. You can see it in the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti welfare energy commenters here display and in the white Christian crowds at tea party rallies. North Carolina is now Democrat proof and is going socially fundamentalist. As many anti-abortion measures have passed in the last three years as in the previous ten. As legislation and school regulation moves toward creationistic thinking, US science is falling behind. Where that leads can be seen in another fundamentalist culture–much of Islam. Check out the percentages of modern contributions to basic and advanced sciences–very, very little coming from Islamist regimes. A very secular regime, China, is advancing in science by leaps and bounds. Where will the US be?

Don: Because what they believe affects how they vote, organize, and rule when they can, an what laws and policies get passed and enforced depends on what they believe, and that can affect me, my family, and my beloved country.

Why care? Sometimes people choose to believe they have a right to keep other people from voting. Sometimes people choose to believe they have a right to stick machines into womens’ bodies without their consent. These are just a coupla reasons why I agree with Lee, and care about what some of these “fundamentalists” “choose” to believe.

Don: I believe Nancy is referring to mandated non-consensual intravaginal ultrasound probing for abortion patients, a law passed in I believe Virginia by antiabortion fundamentalists (for the purpose of demonstrating fetal life, and presumably instilling shame and guilt in the patient). That same action taken outside the environment where the procedure is forced by the state is defined under law as “forcible rape.”

and furthermore, it seems plain to me that many fundamentalists from Elizabethan times, thru the Salem witch era and inquisition auto-da-fe era, to Islamist honor killings and theft suspect hand amputations and infidel beheadings, are basically vicious, psychopathic sadists who use the cover of religious belief to justify their contemptible acts and appetites.

“The other issue is the power of what we’ve been talking about in another thread: ike-minded thinking, especially religious fervor. You can see it in the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti welfare energy commenters here display and in the white Christian crowds at tea party rallies.”

Doights are fair game to speculate onnk that thoun: still no call for thought police or control. Still think that what’s behind peoples actions–ie thoughts–are fair game for speculation. What’s persuasion about? I thought it was about changing people’s minds.

When you come down to it, Don, isn’t it more sensible to persuade today based on today’s knowledge and opinion, rather than try to outguess what the founders meant 250 years ago and more, and argue about their unknowable intentions? We can’t ask them, but as you have, we can ask each other what to do in the present about present issues.

RE creationism, I doubt it. I figure God made a lot of time, he doesn’t mind using it for physical processes to play out in physical ways– maybe he is interested in seeing how things turn out if he just lets them be, or maybe he (or she) is just to darn busy to meddle in everything everywhere. It’s a big universe.

The North Carolina case is an interesting one. I think it’s definitely purple, with a large minority population and a lot of young and educated newcomers in the Research Triangle area.

What happened after NC voted for Obama in 2008 is instructive in several ways. First, a multi-millionaire discount store owner used Citizens United to plow tons of money into state legislative races on behalf of Republicans. They won, and used their numbers in the Legislature to draw new district lines more favorable to Republicans. It worked, with Republicans adding to their numbers in the legislature and in Congress. According to the News & Observer, “Republicans also were successful in expanding their majority at the congressional level, taking nine of the state’s 13 U.S. House seats while winning 51 percent of the congressional vote.”

The maps are still being challenged in the courts, but the Supreme Court has already ruled that partisan redistricting is just fine with them.

Once in power, Republican legislators pushed through new restrictions on abortion and one of the nation’s most egregious voter suppression bills. We’ve often disagreed here about whether requiring a photo ID to vote is unreasonable (sometimes yes, sometimes no, depending on the details). But consider the story of another provision in that bill: For many years, black North Carolinians have used a “pews to polls” get-out-the-vote strategy. After church on the Sundays before elections when NC had early voting, they’d hop in the bus and head down to vote – usually for Democrats. So the Republicans in the Legislature voted to end early voting on Sundays.

Eliminating Sunday voting has nothing to do with fraud, and everything to do with making it harder for black citizens to support Democrats. Think for a minute about how those black Christian North Carolinians must feel about that. They have to feel they are being targeted by Republicans because of their race and their opinions. Do you think they’ll ever feel like North Carolina Republicans are on their side and want them to participate in governance? Do you think single women who value abortion rights will trust Republicans with their votes? Will young people – students are also disenfranchised by the new law – thank the Republicans or hold these actions against them?

A few elections will tell, but I’m guessing that as the old, white proportion of the population shrinks and the minority population grows, the overreaching by Republican legislators and their deep-pockets donors will come back to haunt them. Demographics is destiny, as even Karl Rove understands. Instead of building bridges to minorities, GOP yahoos in state capitals are busy burning them. North Carolina is purple on the way to blue.

What I know about NC politics came from a recent Bill Moyers feature and your comment, Rick. What is scary is that the complete legislative and governorship takeover may install such draconian voter repression and gerrymandering etc. that a clear Democratic majority will still be unable to claw back–or it’s going to take so long that democracy gets cancelled in the meantime. Look how many states elected Obama at the same time as they elected mostly Repu congress members.

I don’t expect the ideological Republicans in the NC legislature to come to their senses any more than the Republicans in Congress. I just think that, in the long run, their actions are self-defeating. They keep painting themselves into corners that could make them a minority political party for a generation. Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I’m guessing the redistricting after the 2020 census will be done by Democrats.

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